


the rain that will strengthen your soul

by activatingAggro (pigeonfancier)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 12:56:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16682038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonfancier/pseuds/activatingAggro
Summary: Hatched into the Hanhai desert, jadeblooded Nanako Bonjou wasn't pulled into the cavern until she was four sweeps old - and first chance she got, at seven, she fled it for the larger Empire. As far as things go, it wasn't the best choice she could make.A collection of Nanako's shorter drabbles, sorted by age.





	1. THE BEGINNING

The older grubs don’t put you on the camel often, which’s a shame: from all the way up here, you can see for miles and miles and  _miles,_  and you feel like a rani surveying her kingdom. The sand stretches as far as your eye can see. So do the camels, all shades of brown and tawny, and the children trailing them like hair ribbons, all greens and golds.

“Are you paying attention to me, cactus-face?” Toshio scolds, and when you jolt up in the seat from your half-slouch, eyes wide, she laughs. “Good! Because what we’re discussing is very important, lah, we don’t need you going in all shocked.”

“I won’t! I won’t, I won’t, I won’t –” Your voice pitches up, tilts into shrieking, and just like that, the world goes red. You have to clamp both hands over your mouth and breathe in through your nose in big, gulping breathes until the shine stops, and everything goes back to the proper blue, blue,  _blue,_ blue as the night is long.

Toshio laughs at you again, bright and warm, and pulls your hands free. “After this, you’re going to be a full member of the group, ‘kay? You and Papaya and Fatiya, You’ll be properly devoted to the moons, just like me!” Her grin is as crooked as her teeth. “And then we’ll get that  _glowing_  problem sorted out, moongrub,” she teases. “Wrap those up in glyphs and dedicate ‘em.”

Toshio’s got a hold of your hands. Hers are so much bigger! And broader, and rougher, so when you wrap your fingers between hers, they barely even fit, and it’s hard to swing ‘em. You try anyway, tugging them until she notices.

“Why can’t we do it now? Why we gotta go to  _town?”_  You’ve been to the town before, when you were little, little, little, but you don’t remember none of it: what you remember is what you’re told, ‘cause Toshio and Affron gather all of you pupas up, every time they find a new one and stick ‘em on the caravan, and they show you everything. This is the cavern you came from, hidden away in the mountains. This is the route you all travel. These are the oasises you need. And yesterday, when the big tent was up and everyone was around the fire, Toshio had pulled out the map, unfurled it right on top of your bedroll, and told you about the town again.

Your camel grunts. Toshio tugs on your hands, reprimanding, and you stop bouncing, but it’s  _hard._  “I bet you could do it,” you wheedle. “You’ve got marks! Affie’s got marks!” All the older kids have the same red swirled across their faces like fingers gone astray, and none of the two are the same. It can’t be hard to get them, you don’t think. You and Papaya copy them in the dirt all the time, and in the soot of the fire on each other’s skin.

“You’re silly,” Toshio tells you. “Because they’re  _words,_  you little pricklebear! I can’t write words, not like that. They say who you are, and who you’ll be, and everything about you, so everyone knows, forever and ever. And the only one can pop you open and  _see’s_  the priest, which’s why we’re takin’ you.”

“Pop me open?”

“Pop open your  _soul,_ Nana, _”_  she corrects, “and see what you should be.”


	2. AT THE ACADEMY | SEVEN SWEEPS / 16 YEARS OLD

“I don’t even know why you  _joined,”_  Sadeen tells you, dry.

When you look at her, she’s not smiling. It’s not really a shock! Your roomie has had it out for you since you first joined, and she realised the two of you were never going to be the bosom buddies that she dreamed of having. Sometimes you think you should feel bad about it. Right now, her ears are back, and her mouth always gets all twisted to the side when she starts thinking about it, her cheeks all plummy, like she’s actually in  _pain._

But you don’t.

You’ve always had a problem with being mean, you guess.

“To serve! Why else join, lah?”

“I wish you’d talk  _normally_.” She’s re-arranging everything on her desk, although you can’t tell exactly what from your position. You scoot your leg forward, pushing a little harder against the wall. “No one can  _understand_  you, Nanako.”

“Not  _my_ problem, lah,” you declare, and heft yourself up.

You have to spit a curl out of your mouth. This wasn’t the  _most_  well thought out moment, especially not when you shake your head to get the rest clear, and of  _course_ Sadeen’s looking at you now.

“Don’t you  _want_ friends? We’re supposed to be like a clade, Nanako. The entire organisation! That’s why I  _joined_! That’s why  _Manami_ joined, and  _Hdijah_  joined, and  _Lokaya_ joined -”

What you  _want_  is for her to stop prying. You lift up one hand, testing the balance, and when you don’t fall, you set it forward. Walking on your hands always  _looks_  easy enough. It turns out it feels a little more hazardous doing it, though. The ground is so close! Your psionics will keep your horns from shattering, even if you fall right on them, but it’s still strange.

(Will it keep your horns from going into your eyes, if you land on them? Gross.)

“Are you even listening to me?” she demands, and, oh. Has she  _been_  talking?

“Trying not to,” you chirp, and arch your back, experimental. You can’t face the door  _and_  open it. Your legs don’t bend that far! Yet. And if you pivot, you’ll be walking out  _backwards,_  and that’s no good at all. Who wants to walk into the hall backwards? You’d slam into someone.

That’s  _mean._  Pepper would be disappointed. “Tell you what,” you chirp, tilting your head to peer at her, “open door, will find all the friends you want me to have in hall, yes? Get some moonlight on my skin! Perfect plan, lah, everyone happy!”

She looks at you for one, long moment.

“I’m sorry, I can’t  _hear you_ ,” she announces, and pulls on her earphones.


	3. GLASS BREAKING | 11 SWEEPS / 25 YEARS OLD

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Features **Pheres Dysseu** as POV.

It’s supposed to be an easy delivery, all things said and done. Aprici is a reliable customer: you don’t particularly like her, no, no more than any of your other ceruleans, but she always pays on time, and she’s easy to manage.

She enjoys your deference. Trolls like that always are.

“Miss Aprici,” you murmur, brushing your lips across her rings, and you only straighten up when she clears her throat. High above you, you can hear the titter of trolls watching, the clink of their jewelry, but you don’t look up: you already made that mistake the last time you were here, sweeps and sweeps ago, when you were scarcely six and still fresh to the business.

There’s a window in the top of the warehouse’s roof. For all that it shades you from the sun, turns the rays dappling the floor into something harmless, at nearly noon, it’d still blind you to look through it.

So you don’t look up, and you keep your eyes on her, instead. “I do hope appreciate the shipment I brought,” you say, and when her lip quirks up, the barest incline, you add: “- I don’t suppose I have much of an eye for blue, but, ah, I thought it matched your chrome very well..”

”Pheres, darling, you couldn’t have gotten closer if you  _bled_ me.” She smiles at you, then, and the jewels overlaying her fangs glisten. You’ve never been a fan of things so ostentatious as  _this,_ for yourself, but you’ve never had the teeth to pull it off: hers are a curling snarl of daggers, thick and heavy enough that even the sight of them makes your neck prick.  
  
But it’s not a personal sort of threat. You haven’t done anything: she just  _wants_  you to be spooked, and so you acquise, bobbing your head down low, spreading your hands in front of you. The thin skin of your wrist glows red under the harsh light, and when you peer over your glasses at her through your lashes, dare to make eye contact -  
  
“You make them look lovelier than I thought, miss -”  
  
\- her face softens at the sight of your gray-red contacts, the blunted edges of your horns, the pupa-curls framing your face. “Don’t start up with the flattery, boy,” she says, jerking her chin up, “we know that isn’t why you came.”  
  
But her smile is close-mouthed now.

“I don’t suppose I could’ve come just to see your lovely face..? No?” You dimple at her, placing a hand against your chest. “Ah. I came to ask a favour, miss,” you demur. “A minor one: I would never wish to waste your time on anything, ah,  _convoluted._ Or unnecessary. But I’m afraid that this is becoming a bit of a problem, and.. well.. I’m only a maroon.”

“I’m afraid I’m not quite equipped to deal with the nobility,” you say, and you let your voice catch. bury your claws into the fabric of your shirt. Your chin drops, but you keep your gaze on her. “Especially not.. well..”

When you bit your lip and look up, there’s a knit between her brows. “ _Blues_ ,” you say, despairing, “- but I know  _you_  are.”

Aprici is easy to manage. If you play the right cards, she’ll do the right things. And you’ve stacked your deck accordingly. She likes pretty things. She likes pretty  _boys,_ pretty  _rusts,_  and she likes feeling above her station. She’s cerulean: barely blue, close enough to the greens to pass in bad lighting. They all enjoy being put on a pedestal.

And is there a better way than swooping in to help their poor, beleagured subordinates? Especially the ones too warm - too  _low_  - to know that she’s scarcely better than a teal?

No. Not at all.

When she pauses before she speaks, you know you have her hooked.

“Child,” she says, and then the window shatters.

You’re already moving when the screams begin, a second after something hits the floor. Two steps takes you beside Aprici’s throne. Her bodyguards have already stepped forward, and they pay you no mind as you put it between you and the chaos. You could just escape out the back door right now, but curiousity has you riveted.

Because the thing that landed into an object, or a bomb. It’s a troll.

The girl - no, the woman - lifts herself from the ground like a dog from the water, shaking out her curls, blinking in the new light. There’s cuts on her face, too light for the glass, and as you watch, olive trickles down from them. She doesn’t seem to notice.

There’s a hole in the ground where she landed. She doesn’t seem to notice that, either, or the flicker of her eyes. Red one moment, and then green-on-yellow the next, like her psionics -

“IPC,” one of the bodyguards whispers, and you don’t have the faintest idea what that  _means._  

“Daya, psi is out,” the woman calls out, cracking her neck, and then she catches your eye through the crowd, and  _beams_  at you. 

“So many  _people!_  What you doin’ here, Aprici? Farming pupas?  _Naughty girl.”_  When Aprici steps forward, a hand on her grenades, you take another step back towards the door. You don’t need to escape. You’re sure they have all of the exits blocked, anyway.

All you need to do is tuck yourself into a corner and jump

“Your psionics are out, girl,” Aprici calls. “Sounds like you made a bad roll. You sure you want to do this? Because you can climb right out that window, and we promise we won’t put too many caps in your ass on the way out.”

“Aprici!” The troll twists her mouth to the side, rolls back her shoulders. “Mean! I don’t need psionics to deal with  _you,”_ she says, and when she surges forward, you turn on your heel and flee.


	4. BEETLES | 12 SWEEPS / 27 YEARS

Back in the night, long before carpenter drones and long before any sort of civilisation, early trolls used to flock together. Still covered in the dew from their first pupation’s cocoons, the pupas would gather together and start building hives: not the type that you’ve been living in for the past eight sweeps, but the sort that Toshio’d shown you back in the Hanhai, when you were young.

Those were massive structures put together from paddy leaves, and grasses, and strips torn from fronds, as long as your arm and woven together until they’re as strong as any proper cord. He’d told you that they’d been around longer than the Lunatics, longer than the Empires, longer than the moons had been in the skies. Looking up at them as a pupa, this structure hanging from the side of the cliffs that was taller than your largest camel stacked thrice over, caked in clay and the light of the moons - you believed it.

Early trolls were excellent at weaving. You, on the other hand, have always had butter fingers and no one to help you out, and on your fifth attempt to braid your hair, you flop back onto your back with a snarl of distress.

The impact sends dust spiraling up from your bed, same as it always does. You hate being down here. There’s no windows in your room, and there’s no familiar buzz of the light grubs above you. No, the only light’s from the fungus in the ceiling. And –

You’ve been complaining to Vadaya, as much as you dare. If he hears too much, your battery leader’s always been hovered, always fretted: he’ll come to haul you out of the caverns himself, matrons and Longhaul be damned, and with his new kismesis hanging off of his arm like a jailbird.. that just isn’t the sort of attention your battery needs. So you’ve been complaining to Hdijah, too, but she doesn’t sympathise.

“You’re in one of the oldest caverns in the entire continent, darling,” she’d told you, the last call. The fungus was pulsing against the glass in the ceiling, soft jade flooding the room with each beat of your heart. It’s awful: even when you close your eyes, the colour floods your vision, and you can’t forget where you are. “Take in the sights! Try to appreciate it.”

All Hdijah can focus on is the age of the cavern, or the carvings in the ceiling. You’re surrounded by history with every step through it, she keeps trying to remind you, and you know how she sees it. The Hanhai caverns are built for much larger trolls. The ceiling is higher than you can reach, even on your tiptoes, even with your horns angled to rake, and it’s covered in nephrite and jade, in carvings that form stories that only make sense to the historians now. The walls aren’t much better. The floor is polished stone, the cavern glows with the light of the stones, and the fungus, and the electricity seeded throughout, and -

\- it’d be more gorgeous, you think, if they didn’t shroud you from head to foot in cloth, with coins and wards dangling off of your hems. It’d be more gorgeous if you hadn’t grown up here, and you didn’t know the cost of each cut in that stone. It’d be more gorgeous if you weren’t a jade, but no matter how much the cavern pretends - no matter how much they reject you for it - you can’t change the chrome in your veins.

That’s fine.

There’s always been some benefits to being jade.

Your beetlemom stirs from the cabinet where she’s been nesting, drowsily, on top of a bundle of leaves. She buzzes through the air in a lazy spiral, her wards trailing her like smoke. When she lands on your arm, her feet feel like pinpricks against your psionics.

[ **awake** ], she tells you, petulant, and then the rest of the horde arrives. It’s been sweeps since the last time you had proper lusii. Once, you could’ve sorted all the voices out without even a pause.

But these are new voices. These aren’t your old mothers: these are new ones, with voices still high and shrill with a grub’s enthusiasm. [ **notwarm** ], the largest of them scolds you, buzzing up to your face. She hasn’t figured out your psionics yet. Her feet scrape against you, trying to find skin and failing, and her voice raises with each passing second as her outrage grows.  **[notwarmnotwarmnotwarm –]**

**[goodnotwarm],** a separate one scolds her. Mu'tamir, you decide, and the first’ll be Najir. Mu'tamir’s calmer than Najir as she perches on your hair, settling into the tangles. [ **jadenotwarm** ]

[ **jadecouldbewarm** ], a third offers up. Khawwan. [ **couldmakewarm** ]

There’s thirteen beetles, and thirteen perigees, as held by the lunatics. When you were a pupa, you’d named all of your lusii by colour, or by song, or by poems that you’d heard on the road. There’d been twenty six of them, and by the time the twenty fifth had died, you’d given up on calling her by her name at all. But you have new lusii, and they have new names.

And Nasir, your first lusus - your only remaining real lusus, from the time you were a pupa - now you have a reason to use her name again. [ **yes** ], she says, warm, to that thought and to Khawwan’s comment, and she grabs hold of a chunk of your hair in her mandibles. [ **willmakewarm** ] She pulls it straight, hard enough to tug at your scalp, but the other beetles fall in line. [ **comecomecome** ]

Natiq pulls it straight. Wa'il and Warnah and Burak pull grab a second strand, while Burak and rubba and Hanin grab the third. The rest tug, and twine, and chatter the whole time, and the only thing you can do is hold very still while they work. Their results aren’t perfect. They’re young, half of them, and they’re not used to this idea, for all that they pick it up. But they’re trying.

Early trolls might’ve flocked together. Jades might cluster like swarms. But you never needed trolls in your youth, and you don’t need them now. You’ve got your lusii.


End file.
